Break 'Til I Shatter
by espergirl04
Summary: Three times Brooke Davis might actually need saving and one time she returns the favor. Brooke/Lucas AU.


Because I love Brooke and Lucas together this is an AU that takes place right after their Season 4 breakup.

Disclaimer: I don't own OTH or any of the characters.

* * *

Brooke's reached the—so drunk that while I know letters form words I can't comprehend them to read a text let alone send one—drunk. This doesn't bother her, really. Instead she latches on to the nearest guy and hands him her phone, "heey" she grins at him, "can you text my roommate for me? Rachel? I don't know where she went."

The Guy, a cocky looking football player (thank God he wasn't on the basketball team, she was done with them) just pulled her towards the people dancing. "Rachel the redhead?"

"Yeah, the redhead that fulfills all redhead stereotypes," Brooke laughs as she says it. Really Rachel just gives redheads' a bad name.

"She left already," he informs her. "But don't worry, I'll keep you company," he hands her phone back as they start dancing.

Her cell buzzes against her ass and she pulls it out, she can't figure out the name on the caller id so she answers it with a generic, "Hey babe," thinking its Rachel or maybe Haley but the voice on the other end is definitely male.

"Brooke?"

Well fuck her. "Luke?" She wants to hang up but she's so shit-faced happy that she decides to grant him temporary amnesty, "why are you calling?"

"Where the hell are you?" is all that he asks. He sounds pissed. Weird.

"Mmm…" she looks around, "Not sure, talk to my friend," she hands the phone off to Football Guy. "Can you tell him where this is?"

Football Guy looks slightly confused but he's drunk too so it doesn't really concern him. "Hey dude…"

She doesn't hear the rest of the conversation because she decides to rejoin the dancing.

By the time he gets there Brooke is—one drink away from him having to take her to the hospital and get her stomach pumped—drunk. Which is why when she reaches for a guy's red cup (he thinks the guy is a football player) with a smile that's in between charming and wicked, he intercepts it. "Brooke, I think that's enough."

She just glares at him "But I want it."

"But you really don't need it. Come on, we're going."

Football Guy hands Lucas her phone and he puts his hand on the small of her back and starts to guide her out. She's surprisingly compliant, he's not going to lie he had expected to fight her tooth and nail to get her away from the party.

Usually Brooke would get firecracker-y and irate but this time she just goes with him and when they reach the front steps she stumbles brings him down with her. He's more than caught off guard when she suddenly bursts into uncontrollable sobs. Not tears, big, heaving, sobs that have her whole body shaking. As she throws herself into his lap he realizes that witnessing this would be like watching the Great Wall suddenly crumble and then collapse in on itself. It's horrible and terrifying because something like this shouldn't happen. Still, there's something beautiful about Brooke Davis breaking down.

He realizes suddenly that this is why she and Peyton make sense as friends when they shouldn't. Because if they were drugs Peyton would be heroine and Brooke would be ecstasy, the two shouldn't mix. But while Brooke might be a little crazy and vindictive she was also happy and cheery and solid. Peyton was dark and brooding and broken. Petyon he could put back together while Brooke didn't need him.

He had thought that Brooke didn't need him.

He was slowly realizing that she did because underneath her seemingly solid and perfectly made up exterior she had been breaking for awhile. She had just never shown it until now.

So he holds her while she sobs and he realizes that she's talking. He rubs her back and tries to listen to what she's saying and he catches words like "jackass…fucking backstabbing bitch…" but then she sits up and looks at him with makeup running everywhere and her hair sticking to her face and says "I had to let you go before you hurt me again because I love you too much, damn it Lucas I love you too much and I don't want to hurt again so I have to let you go." Then she's back to sobbing and he thinks that it's a little strange that she doesn't realize that this way they're both hurting.

Finally when her sobbing subsides he manages to stand her up and walks her to his car. She looks at him and she seems slightly more coherent as she asks, "Why did you call me in the first place?"

He doesn't say it's because he heard from Haley that she had heard that Rachel and Brooke had gone to a party and one of Nathan's asshole ex-friends had texted him saying that he had gotten the redhead and Brooke Davis was there, drunk and asking for it. He doesn't say that he called because he still cared and he knew that Brooke Davis had changed and that while he didn't have a say in who she slept with he had a feeling that she would regret it in the morning. Instead he says that he called because he had just wanted to talk to her.

She seems to accept it.

Brooke Davis was the kind of drunk that she remembered everything the next day even if it was a little fuzzy. She remembers Football Guy and the phone call. She remembers crying . She remembers tearfully confessing the truth to Lucas.

She wishes that she had been blacked out drunk so she didn't have to remember.

So she pretends. When Lucas tries talking to her in school on Monday she acts like a mega-bitch and makes some offhanded comment about him screwing Peyton and he looks at her like he doesn't recognize her and she feels ugly inside. So to compensate she accidentally shoves past Peyton later in the hallway and since Peyton is pretty much a twig she goes reeling into the lockers. It doesn't make her feel any better, instead she feels small and base. To top off the day she decides to go for a little PDA with Football Guy. Now she feels slightly disgusting but a little bit normal.

Brooke discovers it's difficult to maintain any shred of dignity when you're lying face down in the sand sans clothing hacking up a lung and spewing water. Lucas is yelling at her how he doesn't understand how a person can be so intelligent one minute and so stupid the next and when she thinks she's coughed up the last of the salt water she hoarsely responds with, "Well it wouldn't have been a stupid idea if that freakishly huge wave hadn't caught me."

This silences him for a moment before he says, "It's three in the morning, Brooke. How the hell does swimming alone at three in the morning seem like a good idea to you?"

It was luck that he came down to the beach. He had been at a party with the guys and needed to clear his head so he had wandered down in time to see Brooke splashing into the waves and had stayed around long enough to see her swallowed up by one.

Brooke just flips over onto her back and responds with, "When is it not a good time for a swim."

He shakes his head but lies down next to her, seemingly not aware that she's sprawled out partially naked on the beach in the moonlight. In fact the only article of clothing that she kept on is a hot pink thong with black lace. "When you could die without anyone knowing."

She seems to contemplate this but she's Brooke Davis and she opts to not talk about the morbid when she can say "Good thing you came along. Stalker much?" It's a little bit biting but also a little bit joking.

He clings to the joking. "Don't flatter yourself."

He has to admit he's a little surprised to see her out there the next day as he and Nathan play some beach volleyball while Peyton sketches. But Brooke's never been one to shy away from her fears, at least not one that's physically conquerable. Still, he keeps an eye on her even if she's with Haley.

Brooke is feverish and just got done puking up the contents of her stomach and she practically has to crawl from the bathroom back to her room. Rachel is sitting on the couch in the living room chewing on carrot sticks and celery and watching Say Yes to the Dress. Brooke stops, panting slightly, "Rach, I think I'm dying. Urgent Care might be good."

Rachel just glances over at her, "If you're still walking and talking your fine." She bites into her carrot with a definite snap and focuses her eyes back on the flat screen.

Brooke could kill her. But she doesn't have the energy, in fact she barely has the energy to collapse onto the floor of her room and knock her cell phone off her bed. She dials Bevin first because it's alphabetically closest but there's no answer. So then she tries Haley. Again, no answer. And if Haley's not answering then what are the chances of Nathan and there's no way that she's calling so instead she settles on Lucas.

By the time he gets there she's managed to pull herself up onto her bed and he looms over her and at first she's not sure whether it's a hallucination. "Hey there," his voice is soft and his hand is gentle as he lays it on her forehead. "Hey there Pretty Girl, you're burning up." She knows that he calls her that to make her feel better but instead it makes her want to cry but she manages a small smile which becomes a grimace.

"I feel like shit," she manages to squeak. Her throat is killing her.

He chuckles, "You look like shit." But there's a little bit of worry in his eyes and she wants to tell him not to look worried because if he looks worried than she's going to start freaking out. But she can't really talk so instead she settles for not freaking out and focuses on trying to stand up. He manages to help her out of bed but her legs collapse under her and he literally has to scoop her up and carry her out to the car.

Apparently she has some sort of nasty virus and she's confined to bed for the next few days. Not a problem considering she can't actually move. But Rachel is no help and Haley can't come near her because even though Haley insists it's okay Brooke can't stand the thought of Haley possibly risking her pregnancy over her. Surprisingly enough Peyton stops by tosses Brooke's medicine at her and hands her glass of water.

Brooke blames it on the fact that she's still running a fever but she breaks down and tells Peyton that she's sorry for acting like a bitch towards her and that she misses her. Peyton just sits down next to her and strokes her hair and tells her to get some sleep because she looks like the barely living dead.

When Brooke wakes up it isn't Peyton next to her, it's Lucas. He's come bearing homework and soup his mom whipped up and words of comfort. Her fever's ebbing, she can tell because not only is she not racked with chills but also because she suddenly realizes that she looks like shit and Lucas is looking like his usually hot self and she manages to kick him out with a few well aimed underhanded snarky comments.

She can't believe she's doing this. She really can't. But she's getting on a plane the day after her new spring line dropped because she got a call from him. He and Peyton, it turns out, were not meant to be.

He doesn't meet her at the airport and she's more than a little peeved but when she finds him he looks like a complete mess so she decides to let it slide.

She isn't quite sure what happened but the words "Vegas wedding" and "annulment" are used. Peyton hadn't really revealed anything to her either except that it was over.

She stays with him until he looks slightly less depressed and more usual broodiness and then she informs him she has to go. It's been a few weeks and she can't do everything over the phone.

He lets her go. But he shows up at her doorstep months later telling her that she kept her end of the promise, she rescued him back, and he asks her if they can try again. Just one date, at the very least. Against her better judgment she says yes because while she remembers the times that Lucas Scott shattered her, she also remembers the times that he put her back together.

* * *

Hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
